Dispelling truths about our favorite dynasty

How could anyone believe that the crowned Queen of England was a witch? Of all the accusations made against Anne Boleyn (c. 1501-1536) this seems the strangest to the modern observer. But the Tudors were more than willing to accept the king’s second wife was guilty of a whole list diabolical behavior. Let’s examine why.

Although witches had been persecuted for over a hundred years on the European Continent the first statute was not passed in England until 1542, when the Catholic clergy persuaded their congregations that Satan’s army was on the march. This was likely the direct result of the widespread distribution of the Malleus Maleficarum (1486) – the prominent and damaging witch-finder manual written by two German Inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. The Malleus was intended to halt pagan practices, but instead it triggered a wave of witch hunts that resulted in countless innocent deaths.

James Sharpe, in Instruments of Darkness, explains how the Reformation caused similar concerns among…